The Great Texas Train Crash on the Katy Line

I found this interesting story of a page in Texas history.  It happened one day in McClennan County, Texas just 15 miles north of Waco.  The full account as it appears at unmuseum.org :

    
     It was to be a spectacular 19th Century publicity stunt with a carefree carnival mood. It ended in explosions, flying metal and death.

     Nobody will ever know what inspired that idea in William G. Crush's mind. By all accounts he was a conservative man and a solid citizen not given to crazy ideas. Perhaps he was inspired by a similar spectacle done several months before near Cleveland, Ohio. Maybe the idea occurred to him just because his company couldn't figure out how to get rid of some obsolete locomotives.

      Crush worked as a passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, commonly referred to as the "Katy" line. In the 1890's the Katy started to replace their 30-ton steam engines with larger, more advanced 60-ton units. This left almost 50 locomotives for which the railroad had no use. Some were sold to logging camps. Others found their way to gravel companies. Still there were plenty left. 

     Crush's proposal was to take two of the obsolete locomotives and put them on a track facing each other a couple of miles apart. The crews would then fire the engines up, get them moving and jump off. The trains would race toward each other, picking up speed, until they met in a fiery and spectacular crash. The railroad would charge nothing to view the man-made disaster, but would profit from tickets sold for special excursion trains running to the site.

     The company accepted his recommendation and put Crush in charge of the project. Three engines were chosen to be prepared for the crash. Number 999 was repainted green with red trim and number 1001 was painted red with green trim. Each was gone over carefully so that there would be no mechanical failures on crash day. "I'll tell you we really worked on those engines. Firemen in those days had to keep their engines in condition," recalled Frank Barnes who was a member of one of the locomotive crews. The third engine was to be held in reserve should one of the other two fail.

      Drumming Up Business

     Before the crash the engines took a tour to drum up business. "We had a good time before the wreck, though," remembered Barnes. "You see, in order to advertise the event we toured all of North Texas with one of the trains. We went to Waco, Denison, and all those towns along the Katy." Thousands of people came to see the engines at each stop. 

     A spot was chosen in McLennan County, Texas, just 15 miles north of Waco near one of Katy's mainlines to be the crash site. Here, in a natural amphitheater formed by three hills, four miles of track were laid and a grandstand set up for honored guests. The Katy expected a large crowd, so two wells were drilled at the site and pipes run to several hundred faucets. A large tent, borrowed from the Ringling Brother's circus, was set up to serve food. A midway appeared featuring medicine shows and games. Politicians decided to take advantage of the crowd by giving speeches.

     The organizers expected between 20,000 and 25,000 people and built a special railway station at the site for the arriving passengers. A sign there proclaimed the station as "Crush, Texas." On the day of the event, September 15, 1896, people started arriving in droves. The special trains taking people to the event were so full that some brave souls rode on the roofs of the cars. The crowd swelled to between 30,000 and 40,000 people and Crush - for a few hours - became the second largest town in the state.

     Safety Concerns

     While the crowds gathered the engine crews started checking their trains over. Speed tests were conducted on each to help predict the exact point of collision. To avoid having one of engines get away and run wild onto the mainline, the rails connecting the collision spur track with the mainline were removed. Since the couplers used in those days were of the unreliable link and pin variety, the cars were chained together so they would not come apart during impact. 

     One concern was whether each of the engine's boilers would hold up under the stress of the crash. Steam engines use a large, heavy metal pressure tank called a boiler to contain water heated to the boiling point by a fire fueled by coal, wood or oil. At the boiling point some of the water turns to steam. Since steam takes up 1675 times as much volume as the water it came from this expansion creates a tremendous pressure inside the boiler. The high pressure steam is transferred through pipes to the cylinders and pistons connected to the engine's driving wheels. The high pressure steam can then move the pistons, making the locomotive go.

     Should a boiler rupture under pressure the result would be almost exactly like a large bomb being set off. In 1865 the steamship The Sultana suffered a boiler explosion while traveling north on the Mississippi. The ship was packed with an unknown number of union soldiers returning from the war and an estimated 1,700 people died, either directly from the explosion or from drowning as the ship sank. Up until that time it was the largest loss of life in the history of the United States as the result of a maritime accident.

     In 1912 a steam locomotive being readied for a run at the Southern Pacific Roundhouse in San Antonio had its boiler rupture for unknown reasons. The resulting explosion leveled most of the buildings in the railroad yard and much of the surrounding neighborhood. A house and its owner seven blocks away were crushed by the front end of the locomotive as it fell from the sky. An estimated 40 people were killed and another 50 injured. 

     It was clear that if one or both of the boilers were to explode during the collision the event might be too dangerous to stage. Crush had gone to the Katy's engineers and was assured that the boilers on the engines were designed to resist ruptures even in the event of a high-speed crash and it would be virtually impossible for them to explode. Reassured, Crush went ahead with the event, though except for reporters and honored guests, spectators were to be kept back a minimum of 100 yards from the track. 

    The Crash

     The crowed grew and grew all day and some three hundred policemen were brought in to keep them in order. At 5 PM, one hour late, the two trains were brought together at the expected point of collision so that photographs could be taken. Then they were slowly backed up the track to their starting locations. When all in readiness Crush, who had been overseeing the event from the back of a white horse, waved his hat and the crews in the locomotives threw the throttles to full. "We cut the reverse lever back to the second notch, stayed with the engine for 16 exhausts - that's four turns of the drivers - and jumped," recalled Barnes. "Those were good engines. They really got up speed." 

     The engines, pulling only six cars each, raced toward each other. By the time they closed the distance, which took just two minutes, they were going at an estimated 45 miles per hour. "The smoke was pouring from their funnels in a great black streak and the popping of the steam could be distinctly heard for the distance of a mile," reported The Dallas Morning News. "The rumble of the two trains, faint and far off at first, but growing nearer and more distinct with each fleeting second, was like the gathering force of a cyclone. Nearer and nearer they came, the whistles of each blowing repeatedly and the torpedoes which had been placed on the track exploding in almost a continuous round like the rattle of musketry."

    The Deadly Explosion

     The trains hit very near to the expected spot. What was unexpected was that the boilers on both locomotives exploded like twin bombs. "There was just a swift instance of silence, and then as if controlled by a single impulse both boilers exploded simultaneously and the air was filled with flying missiles of iron and steel varying in size from a postage stamp to half of a driving wheel..." reported The News. The flying metal had a deadly effect. People ran in terror. Two young men and a woman were killed. Six other people were seriously injured. One of the official photographers lost an eye. The trains themselves were completely destroyed, except for their last cars, which remained virtually untouched. After the crowd recovered from the blast, it swarmed over the wreckage to find souvenirs. 

     Nobody knows why the boilers exploded.  Afterward, railroad officials speculated that each train traveling 45 miles per hour and hitting head on was the same effect as if a single train traveling 90 miles per hour had hit a solid wall. They suggested this was a much greater impact than they had expected, causing the explosion. Physics shows that this is faulty reasoning, however. The real effect was no more than a single train hitting a wall at 45 miles per hour, perhaps even less. In any case the stunt, expected to generate good will for the railroad, backfired. William Crush was fired that very evening. Proving that, at least in the 19th century, there is no such thing as bad publicity; he was rehired the next day and worked for the company until he retired. The railroad quickly paid any claims against it and the memory of the crash at Crush slowly faded.

     Despite the disastrous results of the crash at Crush, other railroads continued to stage locomotive collisions in the years to come. Fortunately no more boiler explosions followed these dangerous stunts.

      It is unknown if famed ragtime composer Scott Joplin was in the crowd that day, but we do know he wrote a march for the event, The Great Crush Collision, immortalizing the man-made disaster in music.

You can hear Joplin's march here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YRnrZiAlgE - please listen!  You will enjoy it!

Remembrance: Reverend Miles Seaborn, Jr. 1930 - 2012

There are those people in our lives whose influence never departs from us.  One such person in my life was Brother Miles Seaborn.  The term 'brother' before a gentleman's name is a term of relationship, respect, and endearment in the Southern Baptist life and faith.  I am, without apology, a Southern Baptist and Brother Miles was my pastor for almost 29 years.  I first met him when I was 11 years old and my family became members of his congregation.  I gained wisdom all those years from his down to earth, yet eloquent teaching.  Having been a missionary in the Philippines, he was as comfortable teaching in the Cebuano language under a palm tree as he was standing behind the pulpit on a thickly carpeted platform.  He never hesitated to "shepherd" the flock entrusted to him, always being straightforward and loving in his guidance.

There was a moment in my life when I experienced this godly guidance firsthand.  29 years ago, in 1983, I was a 26 year old bride-to-be.  My fiance and I were seated in Brother Miles' study having one of several pre-marital counseling sessions.  Here I must stop and give some background to this story.  When I was a teenager in the 1970's I was a student of the growing women's rights movement.  Being curious, I had read "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women.  Her writing began to influence my thinking, for example:

"The advances of science,  the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the surburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s, a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, and noxious streets.  But the green lawns and corner lots were isolating, the housework seem to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism.  All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial....instead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick.  The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."

“Men weren't really the enemy -- they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.”

“A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.”

“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: ''Is this all?''”

Brother Miles was a learned man and aware of the call for women's rights.  But as we sat talking with our pastor that day, he asked me a question - "What are your feelings about having children and creating a family?"  My immediate response was "I cannot see myself standing over a playpen or diapering babies as my sole occupation."  His slow, kind answer was "Karen, you will never have a more fulfilling job than that of a wife and mother."  Was he saying that I must submit to the so-called dissatisfied life of the surburban housewife and never use my other talents outside the home?  No, he was saying that in God's scheme of things that being wife and mother was a very high calling, especially within a loving home where that role is revered.  

My heart and mind were changed that day.  I worked for 3 years after we were married, up until it was time for the birth of our first child and then I gladly left my job.  When I compare the two directions in my life, I am glad I chose that of wife and mother.  Brother Miles was right.  This role has stretched me and used every talent that God has given me, while developing my mind and heart more than the work-a-day world ever could have.  While seeing value in some points of Ms. Friedan's philosophy, I still loved sharing peanut butter sandwiches with my kids and helping with Cub Scouts!  I am so grateful for Brother Miles' wise counsel.  He will be greatly missed.

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.........We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord."   II Corinthians 5:1, 8  
    

GOOD WORD WEDNESDAY

 The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.  The virgin's name was Mary.  And having come in, the angel said to her "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."  Mary said, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord!  Let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.  Luke 1:26-28, 30-33, 38 - Painting by Alessandro Boticelli

Covering Christina's Couch

Our son and his sweet wife are newlyweds and are busy creating a new home here in Texas.  They live in a cute, newly renovated duplex.  It is a lovely little place filled with their unique creativity.  They have wisely gathered pieces of used furniture, painting and fixing each one to fit the decor they have chosen.  Their small couch, given to them by a generous family member, is colored dark red, navy and green.  For this couch to fit nicely with their chosen color scheme of very light grayish ocean blue and cream, it would need to be recovered.

Christina decided she wanted a slipcover in creamy white cotton.  I love to sew, so I offered to make it for her.  I researched on the Internet and found The Lazy Girl's Guide to Making a Custom Slipcover.  The guide encourages you to "not live by fear, but believe YOU can do it."  Once you get started cutting, pinning, and basting, you step back and say "Wow, I can do this!"  She urges you to "just go for it."  So I took the challenge and began the project with some trepidation.  Christina wholeheartedly believed in me, which was very helpful!

I purchased a little more than 7 yards of white cotton twill, which I thought would withstand many washings and take the abuse that a couch endures. I should have purchased 9-10 yards, as I had to go back and get more fabric for the cushion covers.  I took pictures along the way so you could see for yourself my first foray into constructing a slipcover.

Draping the fabric in each area:

Pinning along seam allowances:

The creases and corners were definitely challenging (see the corner of the couch back below) but I kept reminding myself to put away my fear of failure and my desire for perfection!

Basting over the pinned seams:

Pinning and basting the arm fronts and also marking off the hem:

One finished arm front:

After basting, I turned the entire slipcover right side out and placed it on the couch, tucking in where necessary.  I was pleased with the result so now I was ready to take it home and actually sew it on my machine.  Next I went to work on the cushion covers, which were pretty simple, but I spent a good amount of time getting the corners right.  I was so intent on the process that I forgot to take pictures of the cushion cover construction as I went along.

The result was very satisfying!  Christina was thrilled with the finished product and so glad to have their couch to relax on at last:

Being my first time to sew a slipcover, there was some trial and error, but I highly recommend The Lazy Girl's Guide to Making Custom Slipcovers!  It is a very affordable e-book for only $10.00!  Get it and bring some of your tired furniture back to life!  "I have always regarded manual labor as creative and looked with respect - yes, and wonder at people who work with their hands.  It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter."  Pablo Casals

Slow and peaceful

Needing to go where the pace is slow and peaceful, my husband and I headed to east Texas at the beginning of September.  We were not disappointed.  We checked into the new LaQuinta in Mt. Pleasant and then drove on over to the small town of Daingerfield to spend some time relaxing in the state park.  The picture above was taken from inside the pavilion, one of the many structures built by the CCC in the 1930's. 

We left the park and drove back to Mt. Pleasant and went in search of Damascus Cemetery where my husband's grandparents are buried.  While we were there we noticed that Grandpa Furr lived to be 104.  A sweet aunt, Anita Furr, had recently been buried there and we wanted to visit and pay our respects to this wonderful, down to earth lady.  I remember collecting eggs with her in her hen house.  Being a city girl, I was pretty impressed with her sticking her hand up under those mama hens!  She could bake an awesome blackberry cobbler and was even known to have had a pet squirrel once upon a time.

 This is the shady lane leading into Damascus cemetery and church.

After having some of the best barbecue in Texas at Bodacious in Mt. Pleasant, we wanted to drive back to Daingerfield and look around and we came across this neat little Cumberland Presbyterian Church which was once Chapel Hill College.  I was taken with the wonderful old bell tower.  Daingerfield is the 4th oldest town in Texas and at least 2 veterans of the Texas War of Independence are buried in Morris county.

That evening, we wanted to go to the movies at one of the oldest continuously run theatres in Texas.  The Morris Theatre has been open since 1923.  I think the movie we saw, Cowboys and Aliens, was supposed to be serious, but we couldn't help laughing because it was so corny!  It was so fun to elbow each other and make wisecracks to each other all through the movie!

I have to do some antiquing when I am in east Texas, and my dear husband is sweet to oblige.  This trip I shopped in Jefferson, Gladewater and Mineola.  I found old Aunt Martha embroidery transfers for my daughter, and a cute polka dot cruet for my daughter-in-law. Other finds were a J & G Meakin Welcome Home cup and saucer, and a little old cookbook "Favorite Recipes for Country Kitchens" which proclaimed "Music to any woman's ears is the remark 'She sets the best table for miles around', and it is never more sweet to the woman who is queen of a big and busy rural household."  Call me old fashioned but it makes me want to live in that much more simple time.

When we are here we have some of the best barbecue in either Mt. Pleasant or Gladewater and then dear hubbie must have his catfish craving satisfied at Vaughn's which is way out in the beautiful countryside.  The view from the restaurant is awesome.  When travelling through these little towns you see some unusual things.  We came across these huge metal tank watermelons in a little town that has a watermelon festival every year.

This next thing is kinda scary, so prepare yourself. . . . . . .

It is the giant head of Bo Pilgrim, founder extraordinaire of Pilgrim's Pride chicken.  This is on the site of what was once their world headquarters.  We drove past it and I had to have a picture!  This article I found online is strangely interesting and kinda funny.  Okay, if you have recovered from seeing this, I will go on.

While we were in the area, we wanted to see Caddo Lake.  The drought had obviously taken its toll on this beautifully unique lake.  This is the path for canoes and kayaks to take through this inlet and out into the larger body of water.  It was still navigable in a paddle boat and the rest of the lake had weathered better.  But it was sad to see all the lily pads turning yellow and dying.

We carved our initials on the boardwalk railing (I love my wedding ring!) and on the way out we stopped to watch a family of deer in the clearing.

Our time here was almost over.  The next day on our way to Lindale to eat lunch at Petty's(another favorite), we stopped to help three ladies stranded on the roadside.  There were wildfires reportedly threatening their home in the countryside and they were desperate to get there and take care of their horses and other animals.  We helped them with a minor thing with their car so they could get home quickly. 

We learned later that many, many homes were destroyed in this wildfire.  We were glad we were there at the right moment to help them get home.  East Texas is our special place that we love to escape to, and a part of who we are as a family.  "If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost.  Honor your own stories and tell them too.  The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are." Madeleine L'Engle

Ode to a Beagle

Sweet ears, soft to the touch

Sitting up and begging

For food you loved so much

Nose to the ground

Always on the scent

Curled up snoozing

When your energy was spent

Such a sweet lovebug

Always willing to cuddle

Since you have been gone

My heart is in a muddle

Pulling at the leash

As we walked a little mile

Baying so loud

It made the neighbors smile

Always my little shadow

Following wherever I happened to go

Your sweet, happy presence

How I miss it so

From your little white paws

To your tail with its white tip

Life with Brandi Beagle

Was a very fun trip!

 Brandi Beagle - March, 2002 to September 1, 2011

Summer reading

I have been writing about my summer memories as a child in the 1960's.  This is a particularly treasured memory of that time in my life.  My sweet mother made sure that we kept up with our reading during the summer vacation.  I always looked forward to the Weekly Reader that came in the mail just for me.

But what I enjoyed the most was our regular trips up to the parking lot  of Grace United Methodist Church, which was across the street from my  school, South Hi Mount Elementary.  On a particular day of the week, the Fort Worth Public Library Bookmobile would be parked there, rumbling away as the air conditioner cooled the inside.  I just loved everything about the experience.  There was an entrance door at the front and an exit door at the rear.  Just inside, the librarian sat at a tiny desk where she stamped the check out and return dates in the front of the books I had chosen.

You can see in this picture from a brochure about a bookmobile, exactly how the inside was laid out.  The first inside service bookmobile in Texas was used from 1938 to 1957.  It was bright red so that it could be seen for miles.  It stopped at ranches, schools, and oil camps and circulated 2,000 books a month.  It served during an era of sparse settlement, World War II growth and later industrialization.

This picture reminds me how I knew the exact shelf where some of my favorite books were kept.  Those wonderful books from Sweden called 'Ricka, Flicka, and Dicka' by Maj Lindman.  These 3 little girls had adventures that ultimately, in every story, taught them a particular lesson about being kind and considerate.  These books were so special to me that I have a small collection of them in my book shelf today.

Mother would patiently wait while I made my carefully considered selections.  What a big girl I thought I was, walking up to the librarian's little desk and watching as she stamped each one.  I exited the rear door, my arms full of wonderful books to read on those long summer days.